Last Updated on February 14, 2025 by Dave Farquhar
It used to be that Mark Littell was known for two things: Giving up a walk-off home run to the Yankees’ Chris Chambliss in the 1976 playoffs (a la Brad Lidge), and being traded for Al Hrabosky.
I’m not sure if his new claim to fame is much better, but it’s humorous.
Mark Littell’s new claim to fame: The Nutty Buddy on Youtube
Now Mark Littell is a YouTube star. I read about it in the Kansas City Star this morning. Littell had been working with the Royals’ pitchers one spring and asked how many wore a protective cup. Half the pitchers didn’t. After lecturing them, he set out to invent a stronger, better-fitting cup.
And his demo, involving his invention (called the Nutty Buddy) and a pitching machine aimed at the family jewels, is on YouTube now.
Some reader at the Star made the obligatory comment that Chambliss should have hit that 1976 pitch into Littell’s boys, instead of the boys sitting in the bleachers. I guess a few people are still bitter. Then again, there are a few Phillies fans mad at Mitch Williams, and Red Sox fans mad at Calvin Schiraldi, so I guess it’s a good sign that someone still cares.
This clip has over 52,000 views, and a slightly shorter version has more than 26,000.
Mark Littell’s other claim to fame
And for the record, here’s the Chris Chambliss 1976 home run off Mark Littell.
The clip made me laugh, but I think I’m done watching it. I used to work with a guy who jumped around and yelled like that pretty much every day. And of course watching the Chambliss home run once is one time too many.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.